Page 374 - Infinite Crisis Management

Author Notes:

This arc is nothing if not an exercise in letting Pinkie Pie be Pinkie Pie and then realizing at the last second: "Wait, that's going to be hard to write, and even harder to screencap and arrange." It's not quite writing myself into a corner, but at the same time, it's pushing boundaries I hadn't quite realized were there before.

There are a couple of reasons why I don't perform any direct image manipulation on the screencaps.

1) I am not a Photoshop wizard. True, I know more than the average guy, and I can use it to, say, quickly clean up a couple of guest comics that had errors, but I'm not so skilled that I can manipulate otherwise fine screencaps to do my bidding further. Flash is also out of the question; I have zero experience with that. Remember, I had to get specialized software so I could focus on writing instead of art-ing.

2) Even if I could, it would mean that any comic that involves screencap image manipulation would probably double the production time. I've got the process for a single page - from no script to final product - down to about an hour (not including time spent staring at a Word document and suffering from Pinkie-induced writer's block).

Has he bitten off more than he can chew with Pinkie?
Poll time:
Which of the Mane 6 is your favorite?
That's..... That's the results I'm showing now.
Fluttershy followed closely by Dash by a landslide.

Real poll time:
The CMC(Sweetie Bell), The Mane 6(Fluttershy), The Princess(Luna).
There is still 2 more of these polls.
Who was your favorite 2-parter Villain?
I haven't seen the 4th season premire, so don't spoiled that for me yet.
NMM
Discord
Cyssihlses(or how ever you spell that name)
King Somba
Me:Discord

Well, was he ever established as evil? or just chaos? They aren't the same. Harmony can be bad, chaos can be good, they just usually aren't. Technically eternal war is harmony because both sides are equal.....

Any-who, he works just fine as a trickster too, because they didn't reform the evil out of him, they just convinced him to contain it slightly.

From the old one (yet still, I am sure someone else remembers the old series too) Katrina. Best villain and feline! :3 And seriously, would they put such a character in now, pretty much a self-proclaimed dictator and witch whom can be saved but is sure being not herself at a lot?

In the new series, Discord's voice and behaviour is what takes the cake in the new one, making him being the lovely yet annoyingly dangerous, godlike person whom enjoy to entertain himself, even if it comes at the expense of others.
Other villains were a bit saltless to me, compared to Discord... But the changelings sure were things to make children scared! >:3

Sounds like a story time! When was the last time splitting the party was beneficial?

For me it was with a group running the shackled city (we're still running it btw so no spoilers please). We were in a dungeon and didn't know whether to go left or right, so naturally we split.

The group that went left was a beguiller and scout who the DM afterwards said had >99% chance in dying, essentially because a very high npc assassin was waiting in the next room but a nat 1 on his listen along with a nat 20 on the scout and beguillers move silently ment they could get the drop on it, apparently otherwise the assasin would have gone invisible, spider climb behind them and then murder the two of them to death.

The other group consisted of me (rogue) and a duskblade where we found some weird mushrooms with long tentacles. The duskblade with only 10 con, was rightfully scared of the prospect of tanking the posionous mushrooms and decided after giving me a flanking bonus, to withdraw on his turn so he wouldn't get hit. I was reduced to 1 con and 0 strength in the next round as they all hit me instead. Somehow I lived, albeit helpless and eventually the party (after stealing some of my gear because the beguiller was jelous of my things) to get the cleric to heal me, a week later. This is partly why I'm rerolling as a druid, they can be a 1 man party when they need to.

So I guess it didn't really work, but it wasn't a complete failure, it was just very likely.

There was only *One* time I can remember where splitting the party was truly beneficial~

X-Files campaign using d20 modern. We were investigating a ghost sighting at a mall. Turns out it was a ghost and it pointed us to the murderer. The killer happened to be a retired US Army sniper who was a bit nuts and decided to sit on the roof of an apartment complex, taking shots at everyone.

Naturally to minimize our ability to catch bullets with our heads, our team split up and surrounded him, trying to reach him before he killed again (He already wounded six, two who were out in the open and we couldn't reach without getting fired upon). Luckily our team leader talked him down with his negotiation skills and then another member made it to the roof and confiscated the rifle.

Interestingly, this was the first case where it became a sticking point to train my character in fire arms (I played a 16-year old spellcaster who was hired as a consultant for these X-File cases).

In my first Ponyfinder game, the party split itself. First one pony decided to follow a random encounter as he ran away...across planes....eventually leading to her meeting her evil mirror double, recruiting her, and coming back to the party so the mage could locate the random encounter and gate to it. Then another party member asked to be gated away to another plane so she could have a sidequest which would lead to a reason to take summoning levels. Which led to getting a LSD-breathing gargantuan oracle shark getting reconciled with his similar people (all oracles too).

...Usually I try not to split up the party myself. I've also gotten split-up-the-party requests from players who miss sessions.

No, neither did he ever cast greater invisibility on my rogue, because clearly the party didn't need sneak attacks </sarcasm> (another reason why I'm rerolling as a druid). This was also the character who stole my +5 search skillboosting item because he was jealous I had a better search than him. I think the party has trust issues :)

In my experience, splitting the party has never been beneficial to me personally. Like the time we split up -in an encounter- one group fighting the enemies in a dead end, and the rest of us (me with the squishy healer behind me) fighting the ones in the corridor.

I am going to be running Murder at Baldur's Gate soon... which seems like it'll be fun and full of ebil split ups.

One time we were trying to do something, I don't remember what, but we went to these mines and orcs were mining one side while dwarves mined the other. They asked us to clear the caves of monsters and they would reward us. One of the party members immediately sided with the dwarves and insulted the orcs because he is racist. Well, the DM freaking loves orcs, so our inquisitor went with our racist friend, who has two characters, so they had an anumis fighter, a human ranger, and an aasimar inquisitor. My group had me; a fetchling ranger and a samsaran cleric, and the other PC, a human something. (He died often so I don't remember what he was at that point. He practically makes a new character each time we play.) Our anumis asks the miners if we can look at what they are mining. They show us some unknown mineral. Our ranger then says that it is a crappy element called plasticium, and that there is tons of it back at his farm. Plasticium doesn't exist, he made it up on the spot. The miners decide to mine it anyway. Well, my group went first, because the other group decided to try to steal from the miners. The caves were identical to each other and side by side, so we could here each other if we shouted as loud as we could. We ran into some crab-like creatures, and defeated them easily. We were always one room ahead of them, so I shouted "HEY GUYS! THE CRABS ARE FRIENDLY! YOU JUST HAVE TO SHAKE THEIR HANDS FIRST!" Well, the ranger listened to me. He shook the hand of the crab and it instantly put him at negative half health. We kept moving, and in the last room was a lava child. It was a much higher level than us, so I decided to try to talk our way out of it. I ask why he doesn't go to a much bigger, nicer mountain. He tells us he is here for the plasticium. We tell him that there is a place where there is tons of plasticium, way more than there is here. He asks where and I give him the directions to my friends farm. That friend tried his hardest to kill me for then next few months because I told him to shake the crabs' hands, but he never found out that I told the lava child about his farm because I blamed on the friend who soon died and made a new character anyway. Then we had a huge quest line to go to the farm where we fought harpees, a dragon, and a lava adult monster.

Our Party destroyed an elevator to an underground shrine. SO to get down we had our INT 6 Samurai (Whose Player couldn't come for the next few weeks) hold the rope while the rest of the party went down in teams.

Yeah, I'd imagine Pinkie would be tricky to use in this medium. You only have what she's done before to work with, but her unpredictability makes her less than likely to do anything the same way twice. And when she's in charge of the universe...

I used to run the Werewolf the Apocalypse RPG, and had the players go up against a group of Black Spiral Dancers (evil werewolves).
these evil werewolves were an ongoing threat, so the players went on an epic quest to try to find a weapon to defeat them. This required them to summon and petition many of the various totem spirits. Most refused to take part in the conflict between the 2 groups. finally they went to Grandfather Coyote, the oldest trickster spirit. they were actually trying to find one of his children, but they accepted that they were going to deal with an old one.
Grandfather listened to them, and with a twinkle in his eye, he gave them a lump of spirit stuff, and said that when next they faced their enemies, they would have what they needed.

Several months go by, game time, and finally they face off against their enemies, and they call forth the weapon. a 2 foot long rubber steak, that squeaks when you squeeze it.

the warrior of the group looks at it with disgust, and throws it. Everyone but him has to make a willpower check to keep from going after it.
the evil werewolves don't make it.
thus was born the legend of the squeak toy of shame.

Don't forget that you never split the party
Keep your cleric in the middle, keep your fighters hale and hardy
Keep your wizard in the back, so he can shed some light
And always keep that damn thief in your siiight..."

Raxon: Oh man, you guys! This door requires the four of us to split up and pull switches! Thdy plan to pick us off one by one with our specific weaknesses! Supes, with kryptonite, GL, with something involving the color yellow, Plasticman, with an airtight box, and me, with bullets, or spears, or falling rocks, or fire, or ice, or bees, or-

Superman: Okay! Can you just teleport us past the door?

Raxon: Yeah, but they're clearly ready for us! As soon as we split up, we're doomed!

Superman: We're not going to split up. We're going to skip this.

Raxon: You mean I'm allowed to cheat?

Superman: *sigh* Yes, you can cheat, just this once.

Raxon: Cool. *snaps fingers* Hostages rescued, plutonium recovered, bad guy in a coma and hurtling through space in a pod. I tivo'd cartoons! Who's up for ponies!?

Superman: No, you have to bring Metallo back here.

Raxon: Fine, but I call dibs on his metal body. I'll hand him over when he's got flesh and blood again.

Superman: Can you rehabilitate him in that mindspace of yours?

Raxon: Sure! I'll rehabilitate him until he begs for more! MUWAHAHAHA!

Plasticman: Are we sure he's on our side?

GL: Sometimes I wonder.

Cheating is important, boys and girls. If you can cheat within the rules of the game, go for it.

I pretty much reduced Metallo to a joke villain, due to Raxon's antics. He did a monty python 3 questions bit and tricked the dude into walking through a 30th floor window and plunging to the sidewalk below. No reason for it, he just felt like screwing around. Did it in full view of Lex Luthor, too, because he's planning to trick Luthor into screwing himself over.

Raxon plans to just hand Luthor magical power. Luthor believes Raxon to be creating wormholes and stuff to teleport with. Luthor tries a simple teleport by bending space. It backfires big time. Leveling a city block is bad PR.

"Here is a button that controls nigh limitless power. It can do all manner of wondrous things. Try to keep property damage under ten trillion, okay?"

For teleportation on the grid of probes he's placed, there's zero prep time. Teleportation is an at will cast for him. Not uncommon for him to abuse it by teleporting a pillow to smack someone, but often, it can be used to a tactical advantage. Do not attempt flying jump kicks against a teleport specialist. He will teleport you three feet to the left and upside down

Actually there is a method designed for swimming in full armor. No seriously, it works too, it's just rather slow so you need a lot of endurance. It involves staying vertical, kicking your feet (with knees bent) in opposed circles, and rowing forward with your arms while keeping your elbows straight out from your body.

I had a fighter who could swim quite well in (admittedly mithril) full plate. High Int (Combat Expertise based build) plus not many class skills for pure fighters meant he had skill points to burn, and I sunk enough - pun not intended - into Swim to more than compensate for the penalty.

I'm not allowed to use teleportation anymore, ever since that one game where I managed to argue that hostile teleporting - teleporting an enemy - shouldn't have such a high skill check if I'm not trying to teleport the entire thing.

Enemies have much harder times attacking you when bits and pieces keep vanishing. Like ears, eyes, weapons, armor, clothes, unmentionables...

I don't plan for the part to split, they do it to themselves. Constantly. I wish they would stop. They keep making and completing side quests, but the main story keeps progressing without them. It's painful to keep track of it all.

I can't do that without stepping on player agency too much. They have perfectly valid in character reasons to go off and take care of situations that they feel really matter due to character motivations and backstory. My style is to let players do what they want...with consiquences.